Alchemy

Alchemy

from Faemon on 06/20/2018 04:17 AM

So writes Carl Gustav Jung in an essay "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious" (Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1928).

My introduction to alchemy was On Becoming an Alchemist by Catherine MacCoun, which is a breezy and accessible read although it has a lot of gender binary and makes a valiant attempt at including Vajrayana. It introduced similar sentiment to that abovequoted, which is that alchemy isn't only an outdated precusor to chemistry, but has a spiritual side.

Other readings that I've done on alchemy since then include Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology and Alchemical Active Imagination both by Marie-Louise von Franz who was a protégée of Carl Jung; and Psychology and Alchemy and Alchemical Studies by Carl Jung himself. 

So, mark my bias here in that MacCoun is the only one who unequivocally considers alchemy a self-help spirituality with psychological effects, not (as the Jungians have it) primarily a psychological process of the collective consciousness with the occasionally noted "uncanny" effect. Jung and Von Franz both reveal themselves to be children of their times with regards to ethnocentrism, though the strict gender binary may be inherent or at least overwhelmingly recurrent in this tradition of their study. 

Von Franz's Introduction to Symbolism comes the closest among these works to contextualizing alchemy historically: from the ritual chemistry of mummification in Egypt, to Greece and Arabia as records of an ecstatic mysticism, and mostly during the Crusades the tradition would spread to medieval Europe in the form of heresies. 

Jung was far more interested in the crucible of change at which Hermetic philosophy in alchemy and the physical science of chemistry began to part ways. 

MacCoun is far more interested in the alchemy consolidated by the Theosophical Society, founded in 1875.

Of course, Jung and the Jungians, being psychoanalysts, would have a prejudice towards the secret of alchemy being a psychological change. In Psychology and Alchemy, however, I think Jung makes an excellent case for how the alchemists themselves considered at least some of their own mystical visions and ecstasies as psychic as in pertaining to the psyche. This all despite not having the same vocabulary, and I would think they would also have lacked the cultural framework to make that distinction. The alchemical texts write around it and surely Jung must be cherry-picking, but in my own alchemical doings I'll take it.

The goal of alchemists had been the transmutation of base metals into gold. Taken literally, it's a quixotic pursuit, but popular culture doesn't generally highlight that "aurum nostrum non est aurum vulgi" principle: Our gold is not common gold. That is, as Jung put it though I'm paraphrasing, the worst thing you could do to an alchemist was take anything they said about their work literally. 

This would usually be done—this being making gold, that is, not taking alchemists literally—by making a Philosopher's Stone first, that sometimes involved a big spherical oven as well as alembics and melting-pots, and something called a "pelican" which is a special kind of beaker.

Alchemists would often cite in their writings, the writings of predecessor alchemists, less as authorities and more as expressing points of corroboration. This would be at points, not as a rule that characterizes this collective body of work. Some give four stages or procedures to doing the thing, others twelve, and others still something in-between. 

And it's a big running joke that these alchemical writers never say what the main ingredient is—what a Philosopher's Stone is even made out of, what is the raw material of it? Many alchemical writers will write about how they wish that they could outright say what it is for the readers' sake, but that they can only give subtle hints and puzzles throughout the entire text, and they believe that the right sort of reader will figure it out. When one does write exactly what it is, it's a different main ingredient than the dozens of other alchemical writers specify that it is. Without knowing the thing, an aspiring alchemist can't even begin.

As noted previously, the true process had to do with refining the sort of person that the alchemist was, with the grace or assistance (via mystical visions, or symbolic acts of ritual association) of the gods and incorporeal familiar spirits that would be encountered during the work. 

I suspect that alchemy involved other branches of practise too: spagery, medicines, astrology, and so on not only mystical metallurgy.

Re: Alchemy

from Starfall on 06/21/2018 01:33 AM

I can't comment on the rest, as I know next to nothing about the topic; but I do believe that most astrological symbols were derived from alchemy? For example, the symbol of the sun, a circle with a dot in it's center.

He/him/his, they/them/their, any gender-neutral pronoun.

Re: Alchemy

from Faemon on 07/22/2018 01:02 PM

From what I have been reading, Alchemists used the symbol of "sol" (the sun) as a shorthand for "gold" with the idea that...these metals were the earthly forms of heavenly uhh I don't know what to name it. But the same is with "quicksilver" the element also being known as "mercury" like the planet. But each Alchemist thought something different and organized their thoughts their own way.

Astrology...interesting, I do not know the origins of it, but medieval Alchemical traditions at least referred to astrological concepts very often yes!